To think that no-one should go to Dubai

[Sallyingforth]

while they treat women like this...

Jailed for being raped.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23381448

Mosschops "Dubai is lovely, virtually no crime, a pleasure to walk round without some pissed arsehole letching at your breasts!"

From that statement Mosschops, I assume you've never lived there. I have.

I wonder what your definition of "lovely" is. It's obviously not mine.
How can you say it's a pleasure to walk round ?? There is nowhere to walk. There is no nature, no greenery and of course it's absolutely stinking hot and humid most of the time.

"Pissed arseholes" - they are there too. Often in their dishdash. On another thread recently I spoke of witnessing an Arab masturbating in his car as I walked by him. I couldn't report him as I would have been scared to.

We used to go to the beach for a swim at 7am and the letches were out at that time. Not pissed but I've never been so uncomfortable walking on a beach.

If the UK had a law that meant you needed a confession or 4 male witnesses before it became a crime I'm sure the crime rate would diminish.

That only applies to adultery - see the very helpful explanation someone upthread posted about this. There is no crime in the UAE, in the sense that theft, murder, mugging, drunk people fighting, vandalism etc is not a part of everyone's life in the way it is in the UK. Children of ex pats go back to the UK and are not "street smart" at all and are vulnerable to muggings etc. I think that is sad.

It is a crime here to drink alcohol without a licence and to have sex outside marriage. And let's not forget that the rapist is in prison, and she is not.

I am not a 'Dubai-lover'...I just cannot justify writing off visiting a whole country or experiencing a culture so casually.

I have been to South Africa, China, all over the the Middle East, the Caribbean, eastern Europe - to places with really shit aspects to their laws and customs.

How do you ever really engage with people - and the world - if you sit in your nice suburban semi in England tut-tut-tutting at the rest of the world? Its bullshit, sorry.

So the answer is to spend two weeks in a hotel in Dubai buying shoes and enjoying the air con?
Why?
I've been to a lot of countries with dubious issues sure, I'm going to the filthy, appeasing south of France this summer, but nah, no interest in ever going to the woman hating, materialistic, exploitative gulf states.

NB hope it's not really filthy.

My husband is black.

At least in Dubai we don't experience the vile racism we have been subjected to every time we step foot on French soil

Swings...roundabouts...

Well, Yes, it's the south Asians who are discriminated against in Dubai.

I'm intrigued with how holiday makers in Dubai are engaging with the world. The people I know who go there seem to go with the intention of engaging less with the world.

I really don't think I would want to live near anyone who says 'just because your dh has a job in the local council and would never offered get a job there' Superior much?

I've worked there.

It has it's problems like many places in the world, but as a woman it's certainly not anywhere near the worst country I've lived/worked.

You have a lot of freedom, it is relatively safe, career opportunities are great and if you cared to step outside the malls the culture and heritage is fascinating.

The problem is that the UAE is rich. Richer than you can possibly imagine and therefore a target. The fact that it has existed for little more than 40 years, has had to build an infrastructure from nothing and carve out rules and a judicial system in that very short time, inevitably making mistakes on the way seems to be lost on people.

I'd be really interested to hear where, broadly, is more ethically appropriate?

Moss chops, it does amuse me on mumsnet that the ultimate put down is that you must be a daily mail reader.

Whereas in reality you have no idea about the preferences of posters on this thread who choose not to holiday in Dubai. Is that the best put down you can offer? (alongside council employed DHs)

Oh dear.

Everything on this thread has just reinforced my desire never to visit the place. We all gain different things from holiday and travel, good luck to those who think they can find that in Dubai.

oohdaddypig - and the anti-Dubai folks on this thread put those of us in the ME down on the basis that we are all mall-dwelling Jumeirah Jane's with leather faces and no culture or moral fibre ;-)

The UAE is not just Dubai either - the other Emirates are much less brash and brassy, and have fewer tonnnes of concrete per square mile. I have travelled a fair bit and the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi at sunset is one of the mose beautiful sights I have ever seen. I don't think you should dismiss the whole country on the basis of one (admittedly rather OTT) part.

Snakeskincharly my mother was an anti-apartheid campaigner in the 80s. They campaigned against any business being done with South Africa and supported sanctions. I think it's fairly obvious these days that it was the correct thing to do and we should never have supported a racist state.

But many Islamic countries treat women far, far worse than South Africa treated the blacks. They are denied all their civil rights, the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to their own bodies. Yet there is nowhere near the outrage because it's seen as acceptable to treat people in this way because they are women despite the fact that we would not accept it if the people they were treating this way were black.

All of the people on here singing Dubai's praises remind me of the people in the 80s who used to demand that we supported the Apartheid regime, they're using almost the same arguments.

Bridget, your post is excellent and expresses the point better than mine. For me the issue is also the treatment of workers farmed in to provide cheap - free - labour combined with the vile displays of excess at the same time.

MrsK, I'm Australian, so yes it's Australia, to visit my family. Loathe Kevin Rudd's recent move, I think it's misguided and hideous. And I certainly don't think there are many countries with perfect human rights records (and I certainly include the UK on that list, with policies at least equal to the recent announcement on boat-arriving asylum seekers. And I can kind of see the reasoning behind part if the Australian decision, trying to remove the power of the traffickers, though I think this is a nonsense and appalling way of trying to achieve that).

I'm sure if my family all lived in Dubai, my position on visiting would be different.

However, the systemic intentional subjugation of vulnerable groups is something I disagree with, and I can send the message to those I do business with - such as Qantas - that their business choices will affect my shopping habits. And Qantas's decision to change its partner airline to Emirates and its hub to Dubai is directly supporting a government whose central platform and ethos I find abhorrent.

I'm by no means perfect, but I do try to consume ethically where I can, although I fail a lot. That includes travel. Most countries in the world treat women like shit on some level, so I've had to decide where I draw my own personal line.

Ok by you?

"Vile displays of excess" - oh pur-lease!

The labourers are not unpaid slaves. They are people from generally poor, rather grim parts of the world for whom accepting a job in the ME might mean that their kids eat properly or their mother gets to see a doctor. Unfortunately that is a hideous economic reality for the majority of people on this planet and no amount of sneering and name-calling from Guardianistas in their ivory towers will change that.

I have actually been to a labour camp here in the UAE last Eid - I talked to lots of labourers. Yes conditions were cramped and basic but they were all grateful to have work.

Since you are so concerned about how exploited these people are, tell me what you have done to improve their lives?

'The labourers are not unpaid slaves. They are people from generally poor, rather grim parts of the world for whom accepting a job in the ME might mean that their kids eat properly or their mother gets to see a doctor.'

And therefore all the more ripe for exploiting.

So what's the alternative, squoosh? Leave them and their families to rot in poverty with no chance of employment? Yep, that'll work.

Lurking - your arguments always seem to centre on a resigned "well that's the way it is" argument that I find depressing.

I vote with my feet. Yes I am fairly powerless in an incredibly unfair world but I try my best to choose, shop and travel as ethically as I can. I guess its the butterfly wings theory. I often get it wrong. But I won't ever give up, put on the sun shades and travel to a five star hotel in Dubai. (Not that I could afford to)

Ps glad I've been upgraded from daily mail to guardian

LurkingBeagle - what can we do to improve their lives? What is the answer?

I didn't feel I could do much however I did feel sick watching the men sweating and toiling outside our luxury block of flats and then spend their cash on sugary treats in the little shop next door. I felt gutted knowing what they spent on a bottle of coke and imagining how much of their budget that was.

The only thing I felt I could do was buy a big bag of cokes and sweets and biscuits and suchlike and hand it to a group of them to share. I don't think anything I could do would make their lives/conditions any better but I felt so sad watching them work around the area we lived.

I imagine from your "pur-lease" that you are American and perhaps were a bit naive when you met the labourers who were "grateful" to have work in the UAE. Sorry to be blunt about that.

It also strikes me that most of the labourers in the UAE are from poor Muslim countries, and yet so often exploited by their co religionists. Come here, work in unsafe, exhausting conditions and when we don't need you , you are out. There is also exploitation in the domestic sphere, of nannies, cleaning ladies etc. Yet when these same muslim nationalities come to (non muslim) european countries, human rights are expected to be upheld. Some double standard.

bridgetbidet interesting that you choose to lump the ME into one homogenous lump. I think perhaps more than any other region in the world the spectrum of religious tolerances, political ideologies and approach to life generally is vast and it is the sort of uneducated diatribe that lumps Turkey in with Saudi and Lebanon in with Kuwait that is so frustrating for so many of us who are very familiar with the region.

daddy pig - I totally agree that it's depressing! But that is the way it is, and it is likely to remain so as power and influence shifts to the East. It doesn't mean that I don't wish the world was different, but (imo) it's better to offer practical help today and hope for a better world tomorrow iykwim.

Perils - I am not American. I grew up on a council estate in the UK and I also know what it's like to be on the bones of your arse. (The pur-lease was meant to be ironic... )

I think that if everyone did the same as you then it would make a difference and at least make people think more carefully about the consequences of their lifestyle. People here donate clothes and toiletries at Ramadan that are boxed and distributed. There was also a drive to donate lots of second-hand swimming trunks so that the migrant workers could go to the beach on days off. Sounds ridiculous but many are lacking in absolute basics - the places they come from are horribly poor. I know it sounds like nothing, but if every ex pat/tourist did the same then it would make a difference to their daily lives and raise awareness of their treatment - both of which can only be a good thing!

Has anyone as shared their ethical destination of choice yet?

mrskeithrichards I hear Thailand is lovely....no drug trade or sex tourism....USA fab and of course they never use the death penalty...Italy has yummy ice cream and no mafioso or corruption to speak of....China of course have really cleaned up their act.....

PlatinumStart where did I lump the middle east together? I referred to many Muslim countries, not all of them and not necessarily only those in the middle east. And regardless, the fact that Turkey is quite a progressive society doesn't diminish the fact that many Muslim countries deny women basic human rights.

We wouldn't deal with country that openly discriminated in this way on the grounds of race. Why is it okay to deal with countries that behave this way towards women?